Billy Friedkin Knows More About Movies Than You Do (And He Hates 'Avatar')

On the eve of the Blu-ray release of To Live and Die in L.A., Bess Kalb spoke with the Oscar-winning director of The Exorcist and The French Connection about how Avatar is the death of film as we know it, why modern action heroes are a bunch of wimps, and how you’re missing the point if you were scared of The Exorcist.

To Live and Die in L.A. was just converted to Blu-ray. Why should the consumer shell out for the new edition?

** **Blu-ray is as close as I can get to what I saw through the viewfinder of the camera. Blu-ray is as close to perfection as you can achieve.

Well right now, we’re seeing the use of digital editing taken to the extreme. Avatar was basically digital manipulation as filmmaking. What did you think of it?

Well, probably House of Wax. The original. I can’t think of one great film I’ve seen that I’ve grown to love and seen over and over again would have been helped in any way by 3D.

Which movies are you thinking of?

** **Singin’ in the Rain, or Casablanca, or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or All About Eve for god’s sake. You’ve seen that haven’t you?

I have.

** **So you know it’s one of the two or three greatest American scripts.

Well, sure—

—and if they walked around in 3D would it have been a better picture?

It would be—it would be distracting.

** **What I’m much more concerned with is story and character. I can see the tremendous popular appeal that it has, but I frankly am not impressed by a shot that travels across a row of desks and the desks look like they’re right there! You know, I don’t care about the desk. Here’s how I really feel about it: the motion picture art, the art of cinema, came about as a 2D medium with the illusion of depth, like a painting. The art is not to produce actual depth, but to make you think you’re looking at depth. And the great cinematography of the past had no 3D, _Citizen Kane _for god’s sake! Its one of the most magnificent examples of cinematography ever, and I just don’t see how 3D would have made _Citizen Kane _a better picture. So here we are talking about Avatar, not about some great screenplay! That’s what it is. That’s the zeitgeist.

I think it’s important to talk about the zeitgeist if you’re confronting it for being ridiculous. To address the danger of confusing hype with merit.

** **A lot of people think otherwise! I read a review of it in The Financial Times which is a paper I read every day, I like the writing in it. But the film critic in The Financial Times called it "the film of the century."

It’s been a short century.

** **Yeah, but I mean, pointing the way to the future. I think he’s probably right, but I shudder to think that.

**

Well, Avatar was beautiful, visually. Parts, I thought, were astounding. If it was applied to more "worthy" material, would you consider this an advancement for cinematography? As a way to enrich an image on the screen in the same way Blu-ray overcomes the limits of film?

I appreciate technical advancement. But I basically believe in the characters and the story. I believe the script comes first. It’s as if all of history is ignored when we talk about Avatar as a work of art, when really the work of art is to produce the effect of depth in a two-dimensional medium! In painting, the great artists make you think you’re looking at something real. The experience of seeing Vermeer’s View of Delft—you have to stand in front of it maybe three feet away—you actually find yourself right there watching these women who are talking and moving along the dock in 17th century Holland. You’re actually there! You can imagine their conversations, you can imagine their lives. There’s a massive illusion of depth out of basically a flat surface.

Do you think characters have changed as a result of that shift? **

There’s been a foreshortening of character.

Your characters have been some of the most virile, raging, masculine men in film. It’s rare to see...

** **...I also did The Boys in the Band and Cruising, two unabashedly gay-themed pictures.

And those caught a lot of criticism.

** **But that’s all turned around. The young gay critics of today basically revere films like The Boys in the Band and Cruising. But I take your point.

Lately it’s almost a Hollywood anachronism to have an action hero without magic powers or absurd technological help or debilitating hang-ups about women.

** **The action hero of today is no longer believable. Now, some of these films I like very much. I think the Bourne Identity films are really wonderful. But there are guys like Shia LaBeouf and Toby Maguire who can be action stars today, because, of course, the stuntmen are doing all the work. Toby Maguire is never the guy in the costume. So it’s possible to make an audience believe that these guys are capable of kick-ass action. The effects have made that possible.

What about car chases? Have they been bastardized in the same way? I read somewhere you think doing a good car chase scene is like knitting.

** **One shot at a time. Like one stitch at a time. We had to do it! With real vehicles, with real people. And now, all these explosions and cars whipping across and over and under freeways, computers do all of that. The best car action scenes I’ve ever seen, and there aren’t many, are the ones where they do all their own stunts. Buster Keaton did them, and some of them are remarkable—he had the faÃ§ade of a building fall on him. And they actually had to do it. There was no other way to achieve it optically. Now you can do anything optically.

Are there any that use CGI in a way that impressed you—that you respect?

** **Sherlock Holmes. Now, I initially didn’t want to see it because I’m really a purist when it comes to Holmes. I loved the Basil Rathbone movies—he embodied Holmes to me. I went to see it with great reluctance and I was totally captivated by it. They reinvented the character completely and it’s wonderfully done. Again, it’s all CGI effects, and it’s terrific!

How do you feel about the way other directors remade The Exorcist? The prequels from 2004 and 2005 caused a lot of controversy when they came out. They were mostly critically panned.

Oh I think they’re HATEFUL! First of all, they don’t really believe in what they’re doing. They’re full of gimmicks. When I went to do The Exorcist, I never thought I was making a horror film. I still don’t. It was based on a true story and I tried to do it as true to the facts of the case as possible. I examined the case files and the medical records. The whole story was in The Washington Post in 1949. You can Google it.

I was making a film about the mystery of faith. And, listen, I’m actually stunned to see the way it’s been received over the years. I mean, I understand it, and I have no objection to it, but it’s not what we set out to do.

I was way too young when I saw it.

** **So was I! How old were you?

**

Probably 13.**

Well Linda Blair was 12! [laughs] It shouldn’t be SHOWN to a 13 year-old. You know there’s a line in Hamlet when Hamlet says to his friend Horatio, "There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." And that’s how I viewed that story. That it was totally possible and it was something we couldn’t totally understand. And that’s fearful. Certainly! But it’s not a slasher movie. I mean, that’s what’s happened to the modern horror film.

**

Have any modern horror movies actually affected you? **

The only movie that really frightened me is a French film called Diabolique. Did you ever see that?

No.

** Oh god! It’s terrifying and totally realistic. It’s by a director called H.G. Clouzot, and he was a great thriller director in the ’50s. You must see_ Diabolique_. The climactic scene will scare the hell out of you. It will frighten you, Bess, in a way that few pictures do if you really commit yourself to it. Another one that scared the hell out of me was Psycho. You must have seen that.**

Oh, yes.

If I had control of_ Psycho_ I would take off the long psychiatric explanation at the end. It comes close to ruining it—to have the psychiatrist stand there and explain the whole thing. You take that away and you’re left with the mystery. No one can define evil—that’s what so fascinating about it. Evil resides in otherwise ordinary people. And speaking personally, I don’t believe in psychiatry and I don’t believe there’s any system that can describe human behavior—that can define it. And the other was the first_ Alien_ film. Great, powerful, totally effective. Oh, Alien must have frightened you. [laughs] It was Ridley Scott’s.

Yeah, I think about Alien whenever I have a stomachache.

** **Ha! That bad, huh?

Yes. Are there other directors working today you particularly admire?

** **There are some young filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson. There Will Be Blood and Magnolia are extraordinarily impressive. And I also like Wes Anderson’s work very much. I know them both and I really appreciate their work. And the Coen brothers. I think the Coen brothers would be considered great filmmakers in any generation.

Do you have a favorite Coen brothers film?

** **Actually I’d have to say that I think even though No Country for Old Men was a really powerful experience, their most recent one is the most unexpected and extraordinary film. A Serious Man, it’s called. And being Jewish, I relate to it. A lot of my Jewish friends think it’s about self-hating Jews, and a lot of my Gentile friends don’t get it! But my wife and I totally get it. And I think it’s a great movie—some kind of a great comedy. And I think their first film, Blood Simple was a unique and powerful thriller.

**

And what about action directors? **

[without hesitation] I love Katherine Bigelow’s work! Now she’s not a youngster, but she’s probably the best living action director in my view. I mean she did—did you ever see her film Point Break? Best action film I’ve ever seen. And Hurt Locker, I think, is a masterpiece. I hope it wins an Academy Award. [Sigh. Long pause. Complete tonal shift.] I’ll tell you, though, that if I were going into film today, I’d go into computer imagery, because that’s really where it’s at. That’s the future. And I’m not saying that with great joy, but it’s a fact. You can produce or reproduce almost anything through digital imagery. You can take people to where a film has never been able to take them before. So in that way, the technical prowess is as impressive to me as what a painter can do with a blank canvas.

So it can be used for the good?

** **Sure. Look, if you get a chance, go to the Met. See the Vermeers.

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